What Uvular Rhotics Can Demonstrate About /r/

Traditionally, standard varieties of European languages have used the alveolar trill [r] to realise their rhotic /r/. Non-alveolar realisations were generally speech defects, though common since [r] is a particularly hard sound to produce. Starting in the 16th century in northern France (Haden 1955), it became fashionable in many Western European languages to realise /r/ using the back of the vocal tract. Since then, the 'guttural R', as it is commonly known, has spread to encompass France, Germany and most German speaking areas, Belgium, Denmark, much of Portugal and the Netherlands, and parts of Sweden and Norway. I reviewed relevant literature to find out why this shift took place within the Western European Sprachbund, how extensive the shift is in the modern day, and what it might be able to tell us about the phoneme /r/. My research focuses primarily on France and Germany, because those are two countries where uvular realisations of /r/ are particularly common. I also use a few examples from England, namely the Northern T-to-R rule and /r/- labialisation, to strengthen my argument. I show that /r/ is underspecified for place, manner, and vocality of articulation, and is therefore the most variable amongst phonemes. Thus, it is a useful metric to examine language contact, language change, and social change and interactions.